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It is interesting this herd immunity thing. I don't think a single figure of 65-70% is nuanced enough. In the UK 60% of the adult population have had the jab n

It is interesting this herd immunity thing. I don't think a single figure of 65-70% is nuanced enough. In the UK 60% of the adult population have had the jab now, but people without health conditions under 50 have not yet had anything at all - not even their first dose. Those under 18 are not even scheduled to get it. So can we have "herd" immunity when the majority of the able-bodied working-age population and school kids are not protected yet? From what I've seen in media and data (http://coronavirus.data.gov.uk http://coronavirus.data.gov.uk), the virus is running rampant in teenagers now, but everyone is apparently cool with that because "kids don't get sick from it" (ignoring any long-covid repercussions, which seems foolish to me) Its all well and good making sure at 100% of 75+ year olds are protected, but they're not exactly representative of the people out and about mixing with strangers in shops/workplaces/bars/public transport/gyms/cafes etc

iso1631 6y ago
> In the UK 60% of the adult population have had the jab now First jab Israel has 56% of people fully vaccinated, Chile 22%, US 19% UK is just 8% > but everyone is apparently cool with that because "kids don't get sick from it" The government and media don't give a stuff about anyone under the age of 50, certainly not under 40.
- _joel 6y ago
  It'll be interesting to see if they enforce covid passports whilst a large swathe of the population is still not eligible to have a single vaccine dose, let alone have had both
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    They will, but those not eligible will just get an automatic passport. They need that system anyway for babies too young to be vaccinated, people with health issues making the vaccine inadvisable, etc.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Who is "they"? In the US it will mostly be individual businesses making whatever decisions make the most sense from a business perspective.
    - naturalauction 6y ago
      Presumably the UK where there is lots of discussion about the government possibly making vaccine passports mandatory for certain types of businesses (I think large-scale events and nightclubs are examples).
      - ghaff 6y ago
        There's been some talk in the US at the state level (esp. NY) but AFAIK the federal government has explicitly said they're not going to be getting into vaccine passports.
    - _joel 6y ago
      UK, as was discussed in the thread above
  - AzzieElbab 6y ago
    These are independent things in bureaucracy. Here in Canada they are starting to talk about passports while vaccinations are under 2%
- rualca 6y ago
  > The government and media don't give a stuff about anyone under the age of 50, certainly not under 40. I find this blend of comments disheartening and disappointing, mainly because they appear to come from a place of willful ignorance. Please try not to forget that the reason all covid-19 vaccination programmes have been rolled out progressively from the older to younger segments of the population is due to the fact that: a) vaccines are in short supply, thus mass vaccination programs demand a rational approach to maximize it's effectiveness in lowering covid-19 deaths, b) all covid-19 vaccination programmes prioritize vaccinating at-risk groups within their population, c) covid-19 is patently known to have a considerably high fatality rate on older segments of the population, while on younger segments of the population it's negligible. Let's not feign ignorance here. Covid-19 kills old people in spades while young people just brush it off. If you care about loved ones and aren't happy with he idea of seeing your elders die from covid-19 then it's obvious why said elders are moved to the front of the queue to get vaccinated. This should be so obvious that should require no explanation. Then again basic steps to safeguard the health and well-being of others, such as the ridiculous anti-mask militancy, is sadly a thing. So it's clear that many among us simply care nothing about any issue that does not involve them directly and are so self-centered that interpret basic care for others as an affront to their personal privileges.
  - cgriswald 6y ago
    It might be the right approach but that’s not at all “obvious,” and the question has philosophical, ethical, and political roots. Do we immunize the most vulnerable to make sure they’re taken care of or do we immunize the most likely spreaders to reduce the risk to everyone, including the most vulnerable, relatively equally? How do you weigh in existing precautions, ongoing changes to those precautions, financial struggles, and employment demands to these decisions? Do we focus on regions currently most affected or do we roll it out equally? There are a million questions like these and the choices aren’t all obvious. Your post is unnecessarily hostile, ignorant, and insensitive. I knew someone who died of the disease. He was half my age and I’m too young to be eligible for the vaccine. Not all young people “brush it off.”
    - Angostura 6y ago
- conradfr 6y ago
  The virus as well. edit: just look at the numbers
- plank_time 6y ago
  “Fully vaccinated” is meaningless. What matters is the first dose. After two weeks, regardless of the vaccine, the person has basically reached a high enough level of immunity to prevent getting sick and spreading the virus.
dustinmoris 6y ago
> but everyone is apparently cool with that because "kids don't get sick from it" (ignoring any long-covid repercussions, which seems foolish to me) If kids don't get sick, then they don't get sick. What's foolish or difficult to understand about this? BTW when someone says "kids don't get sick from it" they don't talk in absolute terms. Kids also can get cancer, yet we are not screening their prostate yearly like we do with old men. Wanting to harm children's future, education, development and mental health because out of your own fear is rather distasteful.
- Kaze404 6y ago
  Kids don't get sick but they can still transmit the virus to the adults that care for them.
  - dustinmoris 6y ago
    ...which have been vaccinated by now (unless they are young), so why penalise kids for a risk assessment which doesn't exist anymore?
    - loeg 6y ago
      You know most parents with "kids" are under 50, right? OP is complaining that the vaccination rate <50 is too low.
    - input_sh 6y ago
      Because vaccines are never 100% effective, and there are plenty of people who legitly can't receive one due to other medical conditions.
      - incrudible 6y ago
        An honest question: At what point should we stop trading the healthy development of children for a reduction of risk for certain vulnerable parts of the population?
makomk 6y ago
Last I heard, the UK had very aggressive mass testing amongst school-age kids regardless of whether they showed symptoms, and it didn't seem to be spreading much aside from a brief spike when schools first reopened for in-person learning.
- dfgdghdf 6y ago
  The mass testing story is not what you think it is. The tests are optional, self administered, self reported, only available to staff (not students) in many cases and have a 50% false negative rate.
  - PJDK 6y ago
    I'm not sure this is accurate - tests on students are twice a week according to this https://dfemedia.blog.gov.uk/2021/03/09/covid-testing-in-schools-who-will-get-tested-how-and-where-will-they-be-tested-who-has-to-isolate-after-a-positive-test-these-questions-and-more-answered/ https://dfemedia.blog.gov.uk/2021/03/09/covid-testing-in-sch...
  - vidarh 6y ago
    My 11yo son was tested in school first couple of weeks after returning, and now have self-testing kits that are meant to be used twice a week.
    - dfgdghdf 6y ago
      Again, some schools are running this better than others.
  - Angostura 6y ago
    > The tests are optional, self administered, self reported, only available to staff (not students) That's rubbish. My kids are stuff swabs up their nose twice a week - and they are lateral flow tests, so we sit there waiting to see whether the double line appears.
    - 6y ago
tyingq 6y ago
"I don't think a single figure of 65-70% is nuanced enough." I agree with this part. My guess is that Israel is getting herd immunity at a lower overall immunization rate than expected because behavior is different too. There's still some amount of residual social distancing, social isolating, and so on. Plus whatever number of people didn't get a shot, but have some immunity from a previous (perhaps non-symptomatic) COVID infection.
- sharken 6y ago
  Also agree here, if the population is living under restrictions then a lower figure than expected could be true. That number will be higher with no restrictions at all, due to more activity overall. For me herd immunity is only a way to persuade politicians to remove all restrictions so that we can resume our lives. And Corona vaccine passes do not have any place in this last scenario.
- rjsw 6y ago
  Probably also depends on whether they are getting the Orthodox population to vaccinate and social distance.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> because "kids don't get sick from it" (ignoring any long-covid repercussions, which seems foolish to me) If one reads the actual studies about "long COVID" (and not sensationalistic media reports that leave all the nuances out), they often emphasize that severity of post-COVID symptoms correlates quite neatly with severity of illness. Because younger people rarely have severe illness, that means the risk of long-term symptoms is very low for them. Not zero, of course, but low as with many other common illnesses for which major societal restrictions are not imposed. People might be tempted to jump in with "But my friend who got COVID...!", but please don't, this is irresponsible in a scientific context. All those people before COVID who claimed to have chronic Lyme disease, doctors tell us, likely didn't, and long-COVID self-reporting and anecdotes is the same thing.
- kspacewalk2 6y ago
  There doesn't really seem to be anything special about "long COVID" that isn't well-known and generalizable to viral infections at large: chronic post-viral fatigue syndrome[0]. It's a thing, it affects a small percentage of people who have viral infections, it really sucks (took me 3 months to fully get over a bad flu when I was a teen). The reason it's noticeable now is because millions of people had a novel viral infection at basically the same time, so there's also obviously gonna be a spike of post-viral fatigue too. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome
  - prennert 6y ago
    A quick search on that page does not show any mention of "loss" nor "smell". While anecdotal, I do know of at one person that has lost their sense of smell and taste for now over 5 months. Even worse, any smell she can actually notice (often the faintest of smells ) is disgusting to her. Independently of what the smell actually is. That person is young and to my knowledge not in a risk group at all. In the UK, she struggles to even get someone to take it more serious than just prescribing antidepressants. I would not be surprised if many of the minority of people with long-lasting effects are unknown to the system, because either they do not search for help, or because the health system does not take them seriously. So again, one sample is not a study, but I just want to point out that overgeneralising in either direction does not help.
Diggsey 6y ago
> the virus is running rampant in teenagers now I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion based on the data at http://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ http://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ Total cases have continued to decrease, with the most recent 7-day average showing a 30% decline, and latest figures showing 39 cases per 100,000 people per week. That's hardly "running rampant". > people without health conditions under 50 have not yet had anything at all This is not quite correct. There are a lot of people under 50 who've had the jab for other reasons. Frontline health and social care workers were among the first to get the vaccine.
wefarrell 6y ago
Over the summer there was speculation that neighborhoods in NYC had achieved herd immunity and the threshold was much lower at ~40%(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/health/coronavirus-herd-i...). The thinking was that some people within a community are interacting with many more people than others and that they would be more likely to have antibodies.
- kmeisthax 6y ago
  Yes, but the problem is that you can't really use "likelihood of spread" as a vaccine priority criterion: it's non-scarce. Anyone who wants a shot early will just lie about how many people they interact with, or worse, actually increase that number to try and get an early vaccine.
Angostura 6y ago
The UK's strategy with vaccine roll-out was very specifically nothing to to do with herd immunity, because at the time that the vaccine roll-out started, there was no direct evidence that vaccination prevented infection - only that it was very good at preventing death, hospitalisation and illness. So the British government built a vaccination strategy around preventing death, hospitalisation and illness. It was estimated that if the vaccines had been available during the first wave and we had just vaccinated the priority groups we would have saved 90% of the lives lost to Covid. Those over 20 are due to get their first dose by the end of July. One important reason that school kids aren't being vaccinated is that the vaccines haven't been approved yet because trials in that age group are still ongoing.
- switch007 6y ago
  > Those over 20 are due to get their first dose by the end of July. What do you mean by due? Ministers have said this will happen but there has not been much else backing this up AFAIK. There was a vaccine roll-out plan from Jan which merely mentioned all adults by Autumn. I haven't heard of an official, detailed plan regarding the healthy under-50s.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Matt Hancock said the UK is on track to vaccinate all adults by 31 July. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56672504 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56672504
    - switch007 6y ago
      Yes I acknowledged this ( in the second of just two paragraphs). I’m looking for details. Is it going to be wide open? Or in age brackets? Etc. An actual rollout plan by the organisations delivering it
      - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
        It's really not that hard to find: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55045639 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55045639
marvin 6y ago
Most health authorities have made a tradeoff regarding vaccination strategy. There is an argument to be made that it would be better to vaccinate the groups that would spread the virus most in their day-to-day activities, such that herd immunity (for the groups that actually spread the disease, making it available to everyone) is achieved faster. But my impression is this decision has been too hard to defend, since it would necessarily mean more deaths in risk groups while the vaccination campaign is ongoing. And the difference in time to herd immunity is relatively small if vaccine access is good, only a quarter or two.
- kyboren 6y ago
  > But my impression is this decision has been too hard to defend, since it would necessarily mean more deaths in risk groups while the vaccination campaign is ongoing. You may be right about their motivation, but it does not follow that it would necessarily increase deaths in high-risk groups. To become infected you must first be both susceptible and exposed. I think there was a clear argument for reserving vaccine doses for high-risk groups when those populations were totally naive to the virus. At this point, though, the marginal returns on the population susceptible-exposed product (i.e. infections) are so low, focusing on targeting the most likely community spreaders--regardless of age or individual risk profile--might have an even greater impact on mortality in high-risk groups. Vaccinating yourself lowers your susceptibility to infection. Vaccinating others lowers your probability of exposure to the virus. It's not super clear exactly where the best trade-off lies, but I think at this point we need to focus on reducing incidence in the entire community.
- concerned_user 6y ago
  Vaccination does not 100% guarantee you will not get sick, it almost 100% guarantees you will not have a severe case. Studies also suggest that it does not completely prevent spread and if you catch virus while vaccinated you can still pass it to other people including risk groups, therefore main focus is on preventing deaths and logical way to do that is to vaccinate the risk groups first.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
The priority everywhere at the moment is still to reduce pressure on hospitals, which (at least in my country, which is slower with the vaccination schedule, probably because countries like the UK and Israel pay the vaccine companies more) is still on the rise despite the number of cases stabilizing and in the past week or so reducing. And of course the number of deaths, which has been sharply declining since the start of the vaccination program, since the most vulnerable people got the jab first. So yeah. The end goal is to eradicate the disease and to vaccinate everybody, but because of production and logistical problems that's not possible, so they focus on the in between goals of lowering death rate and hospitalizations, and that's been very effective so far.
- simonh 6y ago
  I think it was about how quickly and decisively they moved to secure supplies, how competently they negotiated the contracts and how effective they were at organising vaccination programmes. I think ultimately it was decisiveness that made the biggest difference, while other countries dithered about which vaccines to support. Now arguably this exposed e.g. the UK to using a vaccine with unfortunate rare side effects (I was vaccinated with AZ myself), but on the other hand this has shielded us from a third wave of infections and probably saved tens of thousands of lives.
martinald 6y ago
From the latest ONS antibody study, (which is nearly a month out of date), 40-50% of under 50s have antibodies now. That's driven by previous infection; vaccination (a lot were done under health conditions), and also a lot are carers/health workers/social workers.
rossdavidh 6y ago
Well the most definitive measure of herd immunity would be, does the rate of cases stay low? And their rate of new cases has gotten to levels not seen in over six months, even though they have ended the lockdown and other such measures. So, either: 1) they have herd immunity, or 2) the lockdown wasn't really doing anything anyway Or both, of course. But the theory that accords best with prior knowledge, is that because they have gotten above 70% resistant (either through vaccination or the virus itself), they have herd immunity because that's what we expected. The real news would be if they did NOT have herd immunity by now, as that would imply that vaccination is for some reason not working. But, good news, it appears to be working.
- simonh 6y ago
  The UK has very definitely not ended our lockdown. We have started phasing out lockdown measures, but most are still very much in place.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    I think the GP is talking about Israel.
    - rossdavidh 6y ago
      Yes, talking about Israel. UK's vaccination rate is better than most countries', but not so high that it would be surprising if they had not gotten to herd immunity yet (given the uncertainty about how many people have already gotten it and recovered). But in Israel's case, their percent vaccinated (and percent recovered) is high enough that it would be disquieting news if they had not gotten to herd immunity.
chriskanan 6y ago
It seems like if the disease is circulating among a population in which they don't often get severely sick (non-vaccinated children), there is still a some, possibly high, chance that it will evolve a mutation that enables infection of the vaccinated adults, if it is allowed to circulate unchecked among children.
Daho0n 6y ago
This.. >"kids don't get sick from it" ..isn't strictly true. A quick look at the local (Danish) health department says that the hospitalisation rate of 0-9 year olds are 181 out of 17004 confirmed cases and 10-19 yo 180 out of 36065 confirmed. 23% of those had an underlying disease. Hospitalisation is defined as someone who have been hospitalised for at least 12 hours with something covid related inside 14 days from a positive test result. So while only something like 1% needs to go to hospital compared to 27% of the 70-79 age group they do get sick and so get long-term damage too.
- katbyte 6y ago
  They also spread it
- frosted-flakes 6y ago
  [Nitpick fixed. Thanks.]
  - bluGill 6y ago
    The period as a thousands separator is common in some English speaking areas. A minority of them for sure, but there are a few that do it that way.
    - frosted-flakes 6y ago
      Which ones? I tried to find some before submitting my previous comment, but was unable to find any.
      - taeric 6y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator My favorite one is India's tradition of grouping by hundred thousand.
        frosted-flakes 6y ago
refurb 6y ago
My understanding is herd immunity means transmission factor is < 1.0 which means cases will only decrease over time and eventually become zero. It doesn’t mean nobody will get Covid and as you point out the immunity isn’t evenly distributed - so you could certainly have outbreaks in sub-populations. But the overall trend should be downward.
usrusr 6y ago
Unvaccinated youth is really interesting because they have such a clear intra age group network of contacts that they could still work like a conductor sending the virus "everywhere" even if they were the only ones susceptible. Even if the rest was 99% vaccinated, the remaining 1% of the rest would likely get it from the "conductor age group", at least unless they have so little contact with the "conductor" that they remain lucky until natural immunisation has happened within the "conductor". But we'll be safe from scenarios like overwhelmed burial logistics in population centers so there won't be much pressure for action. Which personally I find a bit unfortunate, because with vaccinating going forward an additional month more of countermeasures has a well-defined benefit whereas earlier in the pandemic the benefit was a bit murky because countermeasures might have been just a delay of eventually inevitable infections. Cost/benefit is much better now, but cost of inaction is ceasing to be sensational failure, it's getting subtle now. Lucky I think are countries like Portugal that have tackled a massive wave just before vaccination ramp-up, I believe that they can just watch as the infection rates recovering from hard suppression slowly creep up before vaccination eventually takes their sting, with little risk of another wave hitting unbearable levels.
timr 6y ago
> So can we have "herd" immunity when the majority of the able-bodied working-age population and school kids are not protected yet? Yes. It's been one of the dumbest narratives of the last year that "herd immunity" is a single, fixed constant determined solely by vaccination rate. It isn't. The threshold itself is going to differ by subpopulation, and is affected by population mixing, mobility, climate, age distribution, current disease prevalence, natural infection rate and lots of other factors. For example, it's quite possible that large pockets of rural areas will achieve "herd immunity" long before, say, London, simply because there are fewer people interacting on a daily basis. Even then, it's not like you hit the threshold, and infections just drop off dramatically. It's a shift as you get closer to the "threshold" (whatever that actually is), with infections gradually falling toward (but likely never reaching) zero. This toy model version of herd immunity is appealing to the Thomas Pueyos of the world, but not at all representative of what happens in messy reality.
- loeg 6y ago
  In reality, given that the working-age and kid population is like, 80% of the US population, and what we know about COVID R0, it is simply untrue that herd immunity can be achieved with a 20% vaccination rate. Working age population (205M): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S Total population (328M): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/POPTOTUSA647NWDB https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/POPTOTUSA647NWDB Under 15 (~60M): https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/101-child-population-by-age-group https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/101-child-popul...
  - timr 6y ago
    You don't need to guess. The CDC is making daily estimates. As of right now: * 33% of the US population has had at least one dose (19% are fully vaccinated). * 42% (25%) of the population over 18. * 76% (57%) of the population over 65 (who are, not incidentally, by far the most likely to experience mortality): https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations These numbers are rapidly increasing, and on top of the ~100-120M that have been infected in the US already (current CDC estimates are that actual cases are around 4x the number reported [1]). And of course, as I said, it's not as if "herd immunity" is a single number that is the same everywhere in the US. Nobody claimed that we're there yet, but given all current data, pessimism is unwarranted. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/geographic-seroprevalence-surveys.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/geog...
scottwitlin 6y ago
Is the UK’s population that old? 60% of adults, but 0% of those under 50 without conditions? Those statistics surprise me.
- KptMarchewa 6y ago
  People with health conditions and healthcare workers are big part of currently vaccinated groups. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55045639 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55045639
- mattlondon 6y ago
  The conditions to qualify for an early vaccine seems to be quite broad. My wife discovered to her surprise that she had an "underlying health condition" when she got called up for her vaccine a few weeks ago. We weren't - and still aren't - aware of any health conditions! We think it is simply because when she was pregnant a year or two ago she took some drugs that moderated her immune response. She hasn't taken the drugs since. Apparently it is just a matter of people's health records being searched in a pretty basic way - if you are flagged up as having been prescribed drug X/Y/Z etc (apparently regardless of when) then you are treated as having an underlying condition and get the call.
- parenthesis 6y ago
  The UK median age is about 40.
toyg 6y ago
“Health conditions” in my area included obesity and fatty liver. Plenty under-50s fit that bill and hence got the jab. I believe in my borough that 60-70% figure is actually closer to 70-80% by now. Unfortunately Greater Manchester is really a very large system, and a lot of other boroughs have not been as efficient.
- loeg 6y ago
  No need for scare quotes; obesity and cirrhosis of the liver are real health conditions and can make you more likely to be severely ill from a COVID-19 infection. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precaut...
officialjunk 6y ago
the UK is 8% fully vaccinated. israel is is 56% fully vaccinated. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-fully-vaccinated-covid?time=latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-fully-vaccin...
hinkley 6y ago
May be time to develop a scale that factors in interactions per day with total population.
heywherelogingo 6y ago
"the majority of the able-bodied working-age population and school kids are not protected yet" - you don't believe in immune systems? I've never touch touched a mask, in London, I've been fine. If there's a pandemic then I must have had at least one variant by now.
throwaway_kufu 6y ago
I wonder about the effectiveness of “herd immunity” or at least anti-bodies and the various new mutations I hear about almost daily. I have what I think is interesting anecdotal data regarding restaurant works. 1st I live in Miami Beach where it’s essentially been spring break for over a month. Ocean drive has been blocked off since pretty early on in the shutdown with the city giving the restaurants pretty large swaths of the street for outdoor seating. These have restaurants have pretty much been at full capacity since the election if not a little before. Even though they have been operating what would be full capacity meaning fully staffed, I noticed in the last week many of them now have hiring signs that all read “for all positions”. In my mind this can only mean these fully staffed and operational restaurants must have had larger outbreak amount staff recently. While I don’t know if it’s true, I’m left thinking that mass outbreaks is exactly what happened, meaning once a give restaurant staff is infected the restaurants are simply replacing them with new staff which will subject these new batches of employees to a mass outbreak and some point. It it turns out to be true, it’s essentially the people forced into these temporary jobs where they will inevitably get corona just to be discarded and rinse/repeat all because people need income they will willingly subject themselves to that kind of environment...it really feels like im watching a dystopia of the haves and have nots, and while it’s always been the case to a degree, the scale and stakes are deeply disturbing.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  On the other hand it could just be they are expecting even more business and need the extra help. One would hope.
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    That and restaurant work sucks. Pay is low, turnover is high. Not surprising that restaurants are almost all constantly hiring, if they are doing enough business to be open.
    - throwaway_kufu 6y ago
      All generally true, but restaurants on Ocean Drive are not the norm. They usually don’t advertise positions, and I’ve lived here for nearly 40 years and never seen signs posted advertising hiring all positions.
jiofih 6y ago
Only 8% of the UK’s population is fully vaccinated with the second dose.

iso1631 6y ago

> In the UK 60% of the adult population have had the jab now First jab Israel has 56% of people fully vaccinated, Chile 22%, US 19% UK is just 8% > but everyone is apparently cool with that because "kids don't get sick from it" The government and media don't give a stuff about anyone under the age of 50, certainly not under 40.

_joel 6y ago
It'll be interesting to see if they enforce covid passports whilst a large swathe of the population is still not eligible to have a single vaccine dose, let alone have had both
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- londons_explore 6y ago
  They will, but those not eligible will just get an automatic passport. They need that system anyway for babies too young to be vaccinated, people with health issues making the vaccine inadvisable, etc.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Who is "they"? In the US it will mostly be individual businesses making whatever decisions make the most sense from a business perspective.
  - naturalauction 6y ago
    Presumably the UK where there is lots of discussion about the government possibly making vaccine passports mandatory for certain types of businesses (I think large-scale events and nightclubs are examples).
    - ghaff 6y ago
      There's been some talk in the US at the state level (esp. NY) but AFAIK the federal government has explicitly said they're not going to be getting into vaccine passports.
  - _joel 6y ago
    UK, as was discussed in the thread above
- AzzieElbab 6y ago
  These are independent things in bureaucracy. Here in Canada they are starting to talk about passports while vaccinations are under 2%
rualca 6y ago
> The government and media don't give a stuff about anyone under the age of 50, certainly not under 40. I find this blend of comments disheartening and disappointing, mainly because they appear to come from a place of willful ignorance. Please try not to forget that the reason all covid-19 vaccination programmes have been rolled out progressively from the older to younger segments of the population is due to the fact that: a) vaccines are in short supply, thus mass vaccination programs demand a rational approach to maximize it's effectiveness in lowering covid-19 deaths, b) all covid-19 vaccination programmes prioritize vaccinating at-risk groups within their population, c) covid-19 is patently known to have a considerably high fatality rate on older segments of the population, while on younger segments of the population it's negligible. Let's not feign ignorance here. Covid-19 kills old people in spades while young people just brush it off. If you care about loved ones and aren't happy with he idea of seeing your elders die from covid-19 then it's obvious why said elders are moved to the front of the queue to get vaccinated. This should be so obvious that should require no explanation. Then again basic steps to safeguard the health and well-being of others, such as the ridiculous anti-mask militancy, is sadly a thing. So it's clear that many among us simply care nothing about any issue that does not involve them directly and are so self-centered that interpret basic care for others as an affront to their personal privileges.
- cgriswald 6y ago
  It might be the right approach but that’s not at all “obvious,” and the question has philosophical, ethical, and political roots. Do we immunize the most vulnerable to make sure they’re taken care of or do we immunize the most likely spreaders to reduce the risk to everyone, including the most vulnerable, relatively equally? How do you weigh in existing precautions, ongoing changes to those precautions, financial struggles, and employment demands to these decisions? Do we focus on regions currently most affected or do we roll it out equally? There are a million questions like these and the choices aren’t all obvious. Your post is unnecessarily hostile, ignorant, and insensitive. I knew someone who died of the disease. He was half my age and I’m too young to be eligible for the vaccine. Not all young people “brush it off.”
  - Angostura 6y ago
conradfr 6y ago
The virus as well. edit: just look at the numbers
plank_time 6y ago
“Fully vaccinated” is meaningless. What matters is the first dose. After two weeks, regardless of the vaccine, the person has basically reached a high enough level of immunity to prevent getting sick and spreading the virus.

dustinmoris 6y ago

> but everyone is apparently cool with that because "kids don't get sick from it" (ignoring any long-covid repercussions, which seems foolish to me) If kids don't get sick, then they don't get sick. What's foolish or difficult to understand about this? BTW when someone says "kids don't get sick from it" they don't talk in absolute terms. Kids also can get cancer, yet we are not screening their prostate yearly like we do with old men. Wanting to harm children's future, education, development and mental health because out of your own fear is rather distasteful.

Kaze404 6y ago
Kids don't get sick but they can still transmit the virus to the adults that care for them.
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  ...which have been vaccinated by now (unless they are young), so why penalise kids for a risk assessment which doesn't exist anymore?
  - loeg 6y ago
    You know most parents with "kids" are under 50, right? OP is complaining that the vaccination rate <50 is too low.
  - input_sh 6y ago
    Because vaccines are never 100% effective, and there are plenty of people who legitly can't receive one due to other medical conditions.
    - incrudible 6y ago
      An honest question: At what point should we stop trading the healthy development of children for a reduction of risk for certain vulnerable parts of the population?

makomk 6y ago

Last I heard, the UK had very aggressive mass testing amongst school-age kids regardless of whether they showed symptoms, and it didn't seem to be spreading much aside from a brief spike when schools first reopened for in-person learning.

dfgdghdf 6y ago
The mass testing story is not what you think it is. The tests are optional, self administered, self reported, only available to staff (not students) in many cases and have a 50% false negative rate.
- PJDK 6y ago
  I'm not sure this is accurate - tests on students are twice a week according to this https://dfemedia.blog.gov.uk/2021/03/09/covid-testing-in-schools-who-will-get-tested-how-and-where-will-they-be-tested-who-has-to-isolate-after-a-positive-test-these-questions-and-more-answered/ https://dfemedia.blog.gov.uk/2021/03/09/covid-testing-in-sch...
- vidarh 6y ago
  My 11yo son was tested in school first couple of weeks after returning, and now have self-testing kits that are meant to be used twice a week.
  - dfgdghdf 6y ago
    Again, some schools are running this better than others.
- Angostura 6y ago
  > The tests are optional, self administered, self reported, only available to staff (not students) That's rubbish. My kids are stuff swabs up their nose twice a week - and they are lateral flow tests, so we sit there waiting to see whether the double line appears.
  - 6y ago

tyingq 6y ago

"I don't think a single figure of 65-70% is nuanced enough." I agree with this part. My guess is that Israel is getting herd immunity at a lower overall immunization rate than expected because behavior is different too. There's still some amount of residual social distancing, social isolating, and so on. Plus whatever number of people didn't get a shot, but have some immunity from a previous (perhaps non-symptomatic) COVID infection.

sharken 6y ago
Also agree here, if the population is living under restrictions then a lower figure than expected could be true. That number will be higher with no restrictions at all, due to more activity overall. For me herd immunity is only a way to persuade politicians to remove all restrictions so that we can resume our lives. And Corona vaccine passes do not have any place in this last scenario.
rjsw 6y ago
Probably also depends on whether they are getting the Orthodox population to vaccinate and social distance.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

> because "kids don't get sick from it" (ignoring any long-covid repercussions, which seems foolish to me) If one reads the actual studies about "long COVID" (and not sensationalistic media reports that leave all the nuances out), they often emphasize that severity of post-COVID symptoms correlates quite neatly with severity of illness. Because younger people rarely have severe illness, that means the risk of long-term symptoms is very low for them. Not zero, of course, but low as with many other common illnesses for which major societal restrictions are not imposed. People might be tempted to jump in with "But my friend who got COVID...!", but please don't, this is irresponsible in a scientific context. All those people before COVID who claimed to have chronic Lyme disease, doctors tell us, likely didn't, and long-COVID self-reporting and anecdotes is the same thing.

kspacewalk2 6y ago
There doesn't really seem to be anything special about "long COVID" that isn't well-known and generalizable to viral infections at large: chronic post-viral fatigue syndrome[0]. It's a thing, it affects a small percentage of people who have viral infections, it really sucks (took me 3 months to fully get over a bad flu when I was a teen). The reason it's noticeable now is because millions of people had a novel viral infection at basically the same time, so there's also obviously gonna be a spike of post-viral fatigue too. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome
- prennert 6y ago
  A quick search on that page does not show any mention of "loss" nor "smell". While anecdotal, I do know of at one person that has lost their sense of smell and taste for now over 5 months. Even worse, any smell she can actually notice (often the faintest of smells ) is disgusting to her. Independently of what the smell actually is. That person is young and to my knowledge not in a risk group at all. In the UK, she struggles to even get someone to take it more serious than just prescribing antidepressants. I would not be surprised if many of the minority of people with long-lasting effects are unknown to the system, because either they do not search for help, or because the health system does not take them seriously. So again, one sample is not a study, but I just want to point out that overgeneralising in either direction does not help.

Diggsey 6y ago

> the virus is running rampant in teenagers now I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion based on the data at http://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ http://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ Total cases have continued to decrease, with the most recent 7-day average showing a 30% decline, and latest figures showing 39 cases per 100,000 people per week. That's hardly "running rampant". > people without health conditions under 50 have not yet had anything at all This is not quite correct. There are a lot of people under 50 who've had the jab for other reasons. Frontline health and social care workers were among the first to get the vaccine.

wefarrell 6y ago

Over the summer there was speculation that neighborhoods in NYC had achieved herd immunity and the threshold was much lower at ~40%(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/health/coronavirus-herd-i...). The thinking was that some people within a community are interacting with many more people than others and that they would be more likely to have antibodies.

kmeisthax 6y ago
Yes, but the problem is that you can't really use "likelihood of spread" as a vaccine priority criterion: it's non-scarce. Anyone who wants a shot early will just lie about how many people they interact with, or worse, actually increase that number to try and get an early vaccine.

Angostura 6y ago

The UK's strategy with vaccine roll-out was very specifically nothing to to do with herd immunity, because at the time that the vaccine roll-out started, there was no direct evidence that vaccination prevented infection - only that it was very good at preventing death, hospitalisation and illness. So the British government built a vaccination strategy around preventing death, hospitalisation and illness. It was estimated that if the vaccines had been available during the first wave and we had just vaccinated the priority groups we would have saved 90% of the lives lost to Covid. Those over 20 are due to get their first dose by the end of July. One important reason that school kids aren't being vaccinated is that the vaccines haven't been approved yet because trials in that age group are still ongoing.

switch007 6y ago
> Those over 20 are due to get their first dose by the end of July. What do you mean by due? Ministers have said this will happen but there has not been much else backing this up AFAIK. There was a vaccine roll-out plan from Jan which merely mentioned all adults by Autumn. I haven't heard of an official, detailed plan regarding the healthy under-50s.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Matt Hancock said the UK is on track to vaccinate all adults by 31 July. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56672504 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56672504
  - switch007 6y ago
    Yes I acknowledged this ( in the second of just two paragraphs). I’m looking for details. Is it going to be wide open? Or in age brackets? Etc. An actual rollout plan by the organisations delivering it
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      It's really not that hard to find: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55045639 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55045639

marvin 6y ago

Most health authorities have made a tradeoff regarding vaccination strategy. There is an argument to be made that it would be better to vaccinate the groups that would spread the virus most in their day-to-day activities, such that herd immunity (for the groups that actually spread the disease, making it available to everyone) is achieved faster. But my impression is this decision has been too hard to defend, since it would necessarily mean more deaths in risk groups while the vaccination campaign is ongoing. And the difference in time to herd immunity is relatively small if vaccine access is good, only a quarter or two.

kyboren 6y ago
> But my impression is this decision has been too hard to defend, since it would necessarily mean more deaths in risk groups while the vaccination campaign is ongoing. You may be right about their motivation, but it does not follow that it would necessarily increase deaths in high-risk groups. To become infected you must first be both susceptible and exposed. I think there was a clear argument for reserving vaccine doses for high-risk groups when those populations were totally naive to the virus. At this point, though, the marginal returns on the population susceptible-exposed product (i.e. infections) are so low, focusing on targeting the most likely community spreaders--regardless of age or individual risk profile--might have an even greater impact on mortality in high-risk groups. Vaccinating yourself lowers your susceptibility to infection. Vaccinating others lowers your probability of exposure to the virus. It's not super clear exactly where the best trade-off lies, but I think at this point we need to focus on reducing incidence in the entire community.
concerned_user 6y ago
Vaccination does not 100% guarantee you will not get sick, it almost 100% guarantees you will not have a severe case. Studies also suggest that it does not completely prevent spread and if you catch virus while vaccinated you can still pass it to other people including risk groups, therefore main focus is on preventing deaths and logical way to do that is to vaccinate the risk groups first.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

The priority everywhere at the moment is still to reduce pressure on hospitals, which (at least in my country, which is slower with the vaccination schedule, probably because countries like the UK and Israel pay the vaccine companies more) is still on the rise despite the number of cases stabilizing and in the past week or so reducing. And of course the number of deaths, which has been sharply declining since the start of the vaccination program, since the most vulnerable people got the jab first. So yeah. The end goal is to eradicate the disease and to vaccinate everybody, but because of production and logistical problems that's not possible, so they focus on the in between goals of lowering death rate and hospitalizations, and that's been very effective so far.

simonh 6y ago
I think it was about how quickly and decisively they moved to secure supplies, how competently they negotiated the contracts and how effective they were at organising vaccination programmes. I think ultimately it was decisiveness that made the biggest difference, while other countries dithered about which vaccines to support. Now arguably this exposed e.g. the UK to using a vaccine with unfortunate rare side effects (I was vaccinated with AZ myself), but on the other hand this has shielded us from a third wave of infections and probably saved tens of thousands of lives.

martinald 6y ago

From the latest ONS antibody study, (which is nearly a month out of date), 40-50% of under 50s have antibodies now. That's driven by previous infection; vaccination (a lot were done under health conditions), and also a lot are carers/health workers/social workers.

rossdavidh 6y ago

Well the most definitive measure of herd immunity would be, does the rate of cases stay low? And their rate of new cases has gotten to levels not seen in over six months, even though they have ended the lockdown and other such measures. So, either: 1) they have herd immunity, or 2) the lockdown wasn't really doing anything anyway Or both, of course. But the theory that accords best with prior knowledge, is that because they have gotten above 70% resistant (either through vaccination or the virus itself), they have herd immunity because that's what we expected. The real news would be if they did NOT have herd immunity by now, as that would imply that vaccination is for some reason not working. But, good news, it appears to be working.

simonh 6y ago
The UK has very definitely not ended our lockdown. We have started phasing out lockdown measures, but most are still very much in place.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  I think the GP is talking about Israel.
  - rossdavidh 6y ago
    Yes, talking about Israel. UK's vaccination rate is better than most countries', but not so high that it would be surprising if they had not gotten to herd immunity yet (given the uncertainty about how many people have already gotten it and recovered). But in Israel's case, their percent vaccinated (and percent recovered) is high enough that it would be disquieting news if they had not gotten to herd immunity.

chriskanan 6y ago

It seems like if the disease is circulating among a population in which they don't often get severely sick (non-vaccinated children), there is still a some, possibly high, chance that it will evolve a mutation that enables infection of the vaccinated adults, if it is allowed to circulate unchecked among children.

Daho0n 6y ago

This.. >"kids don't get sick from it" ..isn't strictly true. A quick look at the local (Danish) health department says that the hospitalisation rate of 0-9 year olds are 181 out of 17004 confirmed cases and 10-19 yo 180 out of 36065 confirmed. 23% of those had an underlying disease. Hospitalisation is defined as someone who have been hospitalised for at least 12 hours with something covid related inside 14 days from a positive test result. So while only something like 1% needs to go to hospital compared to 27% of the 70-79 age group they do get sick and so get long-term damage too.

katbyte 6y ago
They also spread it
frosted-flakes 6y ago
[Nitpick fixed. Thanks.]
- bluGill 6y ago
  The period as a thousands separator is common in some English speaking areas. A minority of them for sure, but there are a few that do it that way.
  - frosted-flakes 6y ago
    Which ones? I tried to find some before submitting my previous comment, but was unable to find any.
    - taeric 6y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator My favorite one is India's tradition of grouping by hundred thousand.
      - frosted-flakes 6y ago

refurb 6y ago

My understanding is herd immunity means transmission factor is < 1.0 which means cases will only decrease over time and eventually become zero. It doesn’t mean nobody will get Covid and as you point out the immunity isn’t evenly distributed - so you could certainly have outbreaks in sub-populations. But the overall trend should be downward.

usrusr 6y ago

Unvaccinated youth is really interesting because they have such a clear intra age group network of contacts that they could still work like a conductor sending the virus "everywhere" even if they were the only ones susceptible. Even if the rest was 99% vaccinated, the remaining 1% of the rest would likely get it from the "conductor age group", at least unless they have so little contact with the "conductor" that they remain lucky until natural immunisation has happened within the "conductor". But we'll be safe from scenarios like overwhelmed burial logistics in population centers so there won't be much pressure for action. Which personally I find a bit unfortunate, because with vaccinating going forward an additional month more of countermeasures has a well-defined benefit whereas earlier in the pandemic the benefit was a bit murky because countermeasures might have been just a delay of eventually inevitable infections. Cost/benefit is much better now, but cost of inaction is ceasing to be sensational failure, it's getting subtle now. Lucky I think are countries like Portugal that have tackled a massive wave just before vaccination ramp-up, I believe that they can just watch as the infection rates recovering from hard suppression slowly creep up before vaccination eventually takes their sting, with little risk of another wave hitting unbearable levels.

timr 6y ago

> So can we have "herd" immunity when the majority of the able-bodied working-age population and school kids are not protected yet? Yes. It's been one of the dumbest narratives of the last year that "herd immunity" is a single, fixed constant determined solely by vaccination rate. It isn't. The threshold itself is going to differ by subpopulation, and is affected by population mixing, mobility, climate, age distribution, current disease prevalence, natural infection rate and lots of other factors. For example, it's quite possible that large pockets of rural areas will achieve "herd immunity" long before, say, London, simply because there are fewer people interacting on a daily basis. Even then, it's not like you hit the threshold, and infections just drop off dramatically. It's a shift as you get closer to the "threshold" (whatever that actually is), with infections gradually falling toward (but likely never reaching) zero. This toy model version of herd immunity is appealing to the Thomas Pueyos of the world, but not at all representative of what happens in messy reality.

loeg 6y ago
In reality, given that the working-age and kid population is like, 80% of the US population, and what we know about COVID R0, it is simply untrue that herd immunity can be achieved with a 20% vaccination rate. Working age population (205M): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S Total population (328M): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/POPTOTUSA647NWDB https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/POPTOTUSA647NWDB Under 15 (~60M): https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/101-child-population-by-age-group https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/101-child-popul...
- timr 6y ago
  You don't need to guess. The CDC is making daily estimates. As of right now: * 33% of the US population has had at least one dose (19% are fully vaccinated). * 42% (25%) of the population over 18. * 76% (57%) of the population over 65 (who are, not incidentally, by far the most likely to experience mortality): https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations These numbers are rapidly increasing, and on top of the ~100-120M that have been infected in the US already (current CDC estimates are that actual cases are around 4x the number reported [1]). And of course, as I said, it's not as if "herd immunity" is a single number that is the same everywhere in the US. Nobody claimed that we're there yet, but given all current data, pessimism is unwarranted. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/geographic-seroprevalence-surveys.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/geog...

scottwitlin 6y ago

Is the UK’s population that old? 60% of adults, but 0% of those under 50 without conditions? Those statistics surprise me.

KptMarchewa 6y ago
People with health conditions and healthcare workers are big part of currently vaccinated groups. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55045639 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55045639
mattlondon 6y ago
The conditions to qualify for an early vaccine seems to be quite broad. My wife discovered to her surprise that she had an "underlying health condition" when she got called up for her vaccine a few weeks ago. We weren't - and still aren't - aware of any health conditions! We think it is simply because when she was pregnant a year or two ago she took some drugs that moderated her immune response. She hasn't taken the drugs since. Apparently it is just a matter of people's health records being searched in a pretty basic way - if you are flagged up as having been prescribed drug X/Y/Z etc (apparently regardless of when) then you are treated as having an underlying condition and get the call.
parenthesis 6y ago
The UK median age is about 40.

toyg 6y ago

“Health conditions” in my area included obesity and fatty liver. Plenty under-50s fit that bill and hence got the jab. I believe in my borough that 60-70% figure is actually closer to 70-80% by now. Unfortunately Greater Manchester is really a very large system, and a lot of other boroughs have not been as efficient.

loeg 6y ago
No need for scare quotes; obesity and cirrhosis of the liver are real health conditions and can make you more likely to be severely ill from a COVID-19 infection. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precaut...

officialjunk 6y ago

the UK is 8% fully vaccinated. israel is is 56% fully vaccinated. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-fully-vaccinated-covid?time=latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-people-fully-vaccin...

hinkley 6y ago

May be time to develop a scale that factors in interactions per day with total population.

heywherelogingo 6y ago

"the majority of the able-bodied working-age population and school kids are not protected yet" - you don't believe in immune systems? I've never touch touched a mask, in London, I've been fine. If there's a pandemic then I must have had at least one variant by now.

throwaway_kufu 6y ago

I wonder about the effectiveness of “herd immunity” or at least anti-bodies and the various new mutations I hear about almost daily. I have what I think is interesting anecdotal data regarding restaurant works. 1st I live in Miami Beach where it’s essentially been spring break for over a month. Ocean drive has been blocked off since pretty early on in the shutdown with the city giving the restaurants pretty large swaths of the street for outdoor seating. These have restaurants have pretty much been at full capacity since the election if not a little before. Even though they have been operating what would be full capacity meaning fully staffed, I noticed in the last week many of them now have hiring signs that all read “for all positions”. In my mind this can only mean these fully staffed and operational restaurants must have had larger outbreak amount staff recently. While I don’t know if it’s true, I’m left thinking that mass outbreaks is exactly what happened, meaning once a give restaurant staff is infected the restaurants are simply replacing them with new staff which will subject these new batches of employees to a mass outbreak and some point. It it turns out to be true, it’s essentially the people forced into these temporary jobs where they will inevitably get corona just to be discarded and rinse/repeat all because people need income they will willingly subject themselves to that kind of environment...it really feels like im watching a dystopia of the haves and have nots, and while it’s always been the case to a degree, the scale and stakes are deeply disturbing.

nitrogen 6y ago
On the other hand it could just be they are expecting even more business and need the extra help. One would hope.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  That and restaurant work sucks. Pay is low, turnover is high. Not surprising that restaurants are almost all constantly hiring, if they are doing enough business to be open.
  - throwaway_kufu 6y ago
    All generally true, but restaurants on Ocean Drive are not the norm. They usually don’t advertise positions, and I’ve lived here for nearly 40 years and never seen signs posted advertising hiring all positions.

jiofih 6y ago

Only 8% of the UK’s population is fully vaccinated with the second dose.